Intel’s PerfMon software has gained support for yet-to-be-announced processors (codenamed Grand Ridge and Sierra Forest), revealing additional details about these CPUs per a Twitter leaker. @InstLatX64PerfMon also supports Intel’s Granite Rapids processors, a sign that the CPUs are well developed.
After all, both the 144-core Sierra Forest and Grand Ridge processors will feature Intel’s next-generation, energy-efficient cores based on the Crestmont microarchitecture, further boosting the performance and feature sets of Atom-class cores. . The same technology will be used for the company’s Meteor Lake processors, but these CPUs are aimed at completely different market segments.
Intel’s Sierra Forest is, of course, the company’s first Xeon processor based on energy-efficient cores, using up to 144 Crestmont cores and manufactured on the Intel 3 (3 nm class) manufacturing process. The system-on-chip shares the LGA7529 form factor with Granite Rapids processors with high-performance Redwood cores, but is primarily targeted at cloud applications that require massive core counts and energy efficiency rather than single-threaded performance. increase.
Not everything is so simple when it comes to Grand Ridge CPUs.Judging by the codename, this will succeed snow ridge, Intel’s special-purpose Atom-branded SoCs for the communications market. The first details about the Grand Ridge processor came out three years before him, revealing that the chip would indeed serve specialized applications. This is why it’s rich embedded networking and his I/O capabilities, as well as Intel’s QuickAssist Technology (QAT) accelerator.
One of the interesting things about the Grand Ridge is I support Golden Cove instructions such as AVX-NE-CONVERT (converts values from BF16 to FP32, FP16 to FP32, single precision floating point to BF16) and AVX-VNNI-INT8 (looks like AVX-VNNI-INT8) VNNI instructions present in the ). Both instructions are designed to enhance the deep learning capabilities of Intel CPUs, making Crestmont-based products more competitive for edge applications.
One thing to note about the Grand Ridge rumors from 2020 is that at the time it was supposed to be made on Intel’s 7nm (HLL+). Instead, it accelerated deployment. Therefore, Grand Ridge could be manufactured on the Intel 3 manufacturing process. Whether or not this means getting cores or features remains to be seen.
